The difference is that MPI_Barrier or
even MPI_Ibarrier is a crude tool for the job. It is likely to leave resources
idle that could be doing productive work.

I agree it is part of the tool kit but
if this kind of problem is significant enough so a textbook should cover
it then I would advocate that people be taught where to look for the problem
and to consider which tool to use.

The first step is to look for way to
improve load balance. The second step is to look for ways to impede
as few processes as possible and only when they must be impeded.

I am also suggesting that there is a
middle class of application that improves with semantically redundant barrier.
Applications with a significant design flaw that it would be better to
find and fix than to mask.

The MPI standard provides for a flow
control to prevent eager message flooding but it does not provide a flow
control for descriptor flooding. Descriptor flooding may even bring down
a job and the standard does not oblige the MPI implementation to prevent
that. This problem was understood from the beginning but it cannot
be solved within the semantic rules for non-blocking Send/Recv. The options
were to give the problem to the application writer or to say "A non-blocking
operation will return promptly unless there is a resource shortage".

> [image removed] >
> Re: [OMPI users] MPI_Reduce performance>
> Eugene Loh >
> to:>
> Open MPI Users>
> 09/10/2010 10:30 AM>
> Sent by:>
> users-bounces@open-mpi.org>
> Please respond to Open MPI Users>
> Richard Treumann wrote: >
> Hi Ashley
>
> I understand the problem with descriptor flooding can be serious in
> an application with unidirectional data dependancy. Perhaps we have
> a different perception of how common that is. > Ashley speculated it was a "significant
minority." I don't know
> what that means, but it seems like it is a minority (most
> computations have causal relationships among the processes holding
> unbounded imbalances in check) and yet we end up seeing these exceptions.> I think that adding some flow control to the
application is a better
> solution than semantically redundant barrier.> It seems to me there is no difference. Flow
control, at this level,
> is just semantically redundant synchronization. A barrier is
just a
> special case of that._______________________________________________
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